Silence
by Morgana Maeve
Summary: Axel.Roxas: He lies there limp and unresponsive, and there is no way to draw him out of it.


Silence

Morgana Maeve

8/13/08 – Axel/Roxas. FINALLY! Happy AkuRoku day, peoples! The love abounds!

Warnings: Meep.

Disclaimer: I wish I owned them, but I don't. The honor goes to Square and Disney.

:000:

The darkness is complete, and he falls, falls, falls, body wasting away in thin streams of fleshy flakes, but he feels no pain as he returns to the ashes from whence he came.

Oblivion is soupy, thick and gelatinous, and he drowns slowly in it, malignant black permeating his drying lungs, invading his bones and turning his marrow gray. It seeps into blood, veins cracked and broken, heart stilling as the darkness winds its tendrils around and into it, awakening the spark of hidden anger and resentment, suppressed jealousy and despair, unanswered lust. All these emotions, spurred by the dark, eat away at his heart, consuming the purity cultivated and protected.

He blinks, and his brilliant blue eyes turn to glowing yellow, antennae curling out of his head, white-hot pain as he is ripped from his body. Oblivion belches away this unwanted Heartless and keeps the body, perverting it into something else, something new but the same, something different yet so very familiar.

The body fades, hair bleaching from rich brown to pale dirt to dark blonde, skin losing its island tan for a sickly pallor, but the eyes stubbornly refuse to diffuse, holding tight to that sparkling sapphire color.

A convulse in the blackness as broken nails clench gooey nothing, and it roils, spinning and turning and whirling until it is gone. Something with two arms and two legs falls from the sky and lands on hard pavement, bouncing with a sickening thud.

And Roxas is born.

He wanders the shadows, unknowing and bereft, unseen by anything but the dogs that chase his fleeing shadow down the long alleyways, snapping at unreal ankles.

He watches the teens of this world play and fight, wishing that he could be one of their own. He yearns for something he cannot say, deep longing somewhere in his belly, a hunger that won't be satisfied. He is starved and cold, but the pain is not there, an absence that puzzles and worries him, and yet, those emotions are flitting thoughts that carry no significance. Words without meanings.

He is lucky, found before he invents some sort of violence to do upon himself, huddled behind rank trashcans. Two cloaked figures bring him screaming and flailing into a world of phantasmal glory, glimmering sheens of translucent mirrors overlapping to form a gauzy shield from both night and day.

Roxas struggles and fights, unwilling captive in a prison of glass, and he sinks his sharp little teeth into the hand that feeds him, earning a sharp kick in the ribs for his efforts. He gasps, eyes dilated, and shaking fingers seek out and find the hole beneath his skin, fragmented splinters aching beneath his touch. Cruel laughter echoes in his ear.

"He still thinks he can feel," the voice, decidedly feminine, says mockingly. "How amazingly stupid."

The next day he nearly kills her, two strange weapons in hand, knowledge of how to use them burned in his brain. She has no time to react, not enough discipline to employ her own powers, and he stabs and stabs her again, driving his blades deep into resisting flesh, darkness and dust leaking out of her. It is only the screams of false pain that bring others running, and it takes three more cloaked figures to restrain him.

The last thing he remembers is a wheel of fire coming at his face.

When he awakens, it is to burning orange eyes, so alike the sky he had once wandered under, and he doesn't talk as the man speaks in histrionics of Nobodies and Existence, of Heartless and Worlds, and of the purposes of the walkers of darkness. Roxas doesn't care, but the speech brings back phantom memories of a boy and a dog and a duck, and so he decides to stay, hoping more of those memories will open and answer the questions he cannot form words to ask.

But the mental strain proves too much for him, for he is not a half of a whole, but a half of a half. The other half sometimes patters about outside his cell, white dress blending with the wall, colored pencils and sketchbook always with her. She doesn't speak either, only watches as he beats the walls and himself, cuts and tears hidden by his cloak, gashes at his chest where he has been digging for something that is missing.

And so, every night, he wails and screams and froths, and in the morning, he assumes the façade of calm and collected, killing Heartless for just the fun, missions a mere label the others attach to it.

It is not surprising that things turn out the way they do; it is surprising that it happens so fast.

Axel doesn't know what the attraction is, if it can be called that, but he finds himself more and more often at Roxas' box, watching with palms pressed to the glass, body quivering with something anticipated but not quite expected. Roxas pretends not to notice him, but his body reacts as well, gravitating to the corner where Axel sits.

One night, the glass is gone and Axel falls in, slightly stunned and disoriented, but that is nothing compared to what happens next.

Roxas crosses the cell in six quick steps, seizing Axel by his shoulders and swinging his legs over the lithe body, pinning down elbows with knees. Their faces are close, flushed countenance of Roxas radiating heat onto Axel's pale cheeks.

"Make me feel," Roxas demands.

"I—" falters Axel.

"Make me feel," the blonde demands again. "Make me feel." And then he kisses Axel with his teeth.

It is good, clean pain, nothing like that tender, throbbing ache, a taste of dried blood in Axel's mouth. Roxas moves over him hungrily, lips, tongue, teeth all searching and finding, and soon, Axel is reciprocating, neck arching up to meet Roxas' insistent need.

As their tongues dance over each other in slick ballet, he finds that Roxas tastes of unripe grapes, sticky and sour, and Roxas finds that he tastes of burnt cinnamon, heavy and thick.

There is thin pain at his elbows where Roxas is leaning, but when the smaller Nobody leans forward, coat unzipped and hanging, Axel forgets the trickle of pain and gapes at all the self-inflicted wounds, aghast at the battlefield that is Roxas' body.

He forces himself free of the biting weight, wriggling and squirming until he has found a way out, and then slowly peels Roxas' coat away from his body, scars angry and pink, defiant in their ugly glory. First thumbs gently glide over each one, stinging caress, and then mouth follows, sliding effortlessly across soft skin, lips forming words neither understands.

Hands at the side of his head as Roxas forces his face closer, body flushed and heaving. Gaping hole at Roxas' chest, ravaged flesh tattered and hanging. Axel presses moist lips to the crater and blows, and pain explodes into fervent fever, raging turmoil in a hollow shell.

"Oh, please," Roxas gasps, rocking as he sits, heels thudding on the white floor. And Axel understands.

He doesn't waste time trying to awaken what is already dead; he simply slips lower and undoes the buttons at Roxas' waist.

It is comatose, limp and unresponsive, and when Axel touches with a warming hand, it gives a languid sort of twitch and settles down into deeper sleep.

Looking almost close to stricken, Roxas puts his head back and keens, grating sound ripped from his throat, ragged noise that is both inhuman and so verily human. Axel is at a loss what to do, but this too he understands.

His own member is just as weak. It is a thing all Nobodies must endure, this terrifying hunger that can never be slated.

"You can't, can you?" Roxas asks tiredly, bringing his head up for a minute. Axel shakes his head, and Roxas sighs bitterly, letting his body flop down. "It doesn't work when I try either."

For the first time, Axel notices the red welts covering Roxas' member, the scratches and the slices, slits that are deep and refuse to heal, open and inflamed, sore, and if it could be, infected.

"I thought the pain might help," he explains when Axel looks down at him in worried and horrified shock, eyes following the myriad cuts trailing down Roxas' legs. The smaller Nobody laughs and looks at his hand, fingernails broken and battered, fingers stained a bruised purple. "But I can't even feel that."

It is the haunted look in Roxas' eyes, the despair that turns them into hollow ice, that moves Axel to lie down next to this ruined ghost, this creature that hurts itself even though it knows it cannot feel.

And so, together they lie, side by side, hands moving across bodies, mouths meeting and mingling, wet and sloppy, lips brushing against one another in erotic tango, legs and chests and hands pressed and laced together, remnants of lovers on sun-kissed sand. Sometimes, a hip will jerk, spasmodic reaction to jolt of numb pleasure, but it is met with only silence.

:000:

I'm sorry, what? Sex? On AkuRoku day? Whatever gave you that notion?

I am now going to start dodging the bricks. Sex will come on Sunday (Oh gawd, the irony) in the form of the final chapter of 'The Sacrifice.' I luffs you all, AkuRoku fans. Let's PAR-TAY!

Read and review if you want to brick me.


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